Mark Rossnick
mark.rosneck@mesanetworks.net
Mesa Networks

"We need to make marketing more FUN!"

When I hear this from a manager, I know I'm about to embark into some surreal world that's going to put me hopelessly behind getting done a whole list of things that simply can't wait. For every hour trying to make marketing more fun, that's an hour I need to make up. I'm here to tell you that marketing isn't fun. Scuba diving is fun. Spending time with the family is fun. All sorts of other leisure activities are fun. Marketing is work.

That doesn't mean that marketing needs to be a tortuous activity; it can be quite fulfilling. It's also quite funny. In fact, high-tech marketing is incredibly funny! What can be funnier than trying to predict the future? Marketers are the only group in the company that's asked to pontificate on all sorts of future events without the slightest inkling about what's really going to happen. Oh, sure, we have some theory to help us, we have our experience and we ask a lot of people their opinions but we really don't have a clue. Way too many companies spend too much time trying to guess the future to three decimal places when they would be much better off having a good laugh about the entire process and working harder on the mechanisms to adjust the business as reality sets in.

Another funny thing is how everyone believes they can do marketing. Not too very long ago I was working on a product line forecast for the next fiscal year and had an industry forecast that showed the segment we were targeting was growing at seven percent. I thought a new product we were just introducing would give us another two points. The president of the company needed to show twelve percent growth to the Board of Directors to justify the R&D expenses for the new product. And so twelve percent it is! Where would the additional three percent growth come from? Marketing, of course! Now that's funny.

I need to tell you about one of my pet peeves: travel. When business is good, it's usually easy to have travel approved because budgets are flush. However, there's usually little reason to travel since, well, business is good and sales is happy. When business is bad, travel? Forget about it! Of course, it might be good to find out if anything can be done to improve the sales situation. It just doesn't happen. Who does travel in these situations? It's almost certainly the president of the company or one of his minions. But I think we've covered this topic already. I've decided this is simply a genetic flaw inherent in all business and will never change.  It's just one of those funny things but one where I think we often miss the boat in being perceived as adding value to increasing business in down markets.

Another travel pet peeve is that management often sees marketing travel as a perk. I don't know about you but I haven't been on very many fun business trips. There's the occasional debauchery* but it certainly doesn't make up for the hours being pummeled by angry customers. (Actually, I've never had any good debauchery either. Well, there was this one time at Saint Patrick's Day but that was, technically, after the business part of the trip was over.) Have you noticed that sales rarely asks you to visit happy customers? That's another of those funny things. What's even funnier is that we seem to like it!

Something I don't find fun is writing things down. When you write things down you have what I believe is called a ?plan? and then there's an expectation that you'll actually follow the ?plan." This is unreasonable since if we really don't understand the future, there's no real reason to plan. But I think we've covered that. On the other hand, if you actually do write down a plan, it's easier for others in the organization to understand what you actually do for a living. It's also somewhat easier to gain consensus from others since they can see how their bit fits into the overall scheme of things. Funny how that works out.

There's one thing that's absolutely critical about writing things down. You must have charts and graphs. Senior Product Managers put these charts and graphs in the Executive Summary particularly if your president likes to do marketing (and is there a president who doesn't? But I digress.) Making charts and graphs used to be anything but fun. And then came Microsoft Excel. Now charts and graphs are fun and more than that they make completely fictitious numbers seem like "data." Here's a particularly useful chart that's fun to use. Senior Product Managers realize that it's very important to leave the actual year off the graph to allow maximal flexibility in achieving results.

The funniest thing about marketing is that it's the personification of Joseph Heller's Catch-22. "There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one's safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind. Orr was crazy and could be grounded. All he had to do was ask; and as soon as he did, he would no longer be crazy and would have to fly more missions." It's a rational Product Manager that recognizes the dangers in launching any new product. But only a crazy person would take on all the responsibility of ensuring a product's success in the face of intense competition, unknown economic pressures, and the inevitable internal screwups. But if you admit that being a Product Manager is crazy, you only show how rational you are! You probably didn't know that Catch-22 was a marketing book did you? What's more fun than that!

Documentation and training are really funny since it seems that documentation groups don't do documentation and training groups don't do training. What's funny is that Product Marketing often does the documentation and training. The best I can figure, these organizations are in charge of determining the size and type of font that's used in collateral pieces. I think that's a good thing since the most contentious marketing debate I was ever involved with was whether PowerPoint slides should use serif or sans serif fonts. I don't think we ever resolved the font size issue. Some people think that fonts are funny but the only font that's funny to me is Courier New only because it's an oxymoron. You're right. Font's aren't funny. Sorry.

Is there anything funnier than Microsoft PowerPoint slides? A few bullets, five or six graphs (ideally from consultants, magazines, and market analysts), a customer quote, and viola! A new product is born. Not only that, but Sales will have booked the entire first month's production before the slide labeled "Risks" even makes its way on to the screen. Senior Product Managers often refer to the "Risks" slide as "back up information." The best thing about PowerPoint slides is at that point the product has no costs, no bugs, and meets every customer need--real or imagined. The product development is also on schedule.

One thing I don't find funny at all is being 'swamped' with work that comes from the failure of other organizations to pick up the ball. Most marketers are highly success driven and will jump into almost any size fire that is preventing their product from being a success. Maybe that's why they call it "burnout". Perhaps we would be better off helping other people find the fire extinguishers rather than trying to stomp out the fire ourselves.

Every job has its pros and cons with ups and downs. What makes marketing a little different is the lack of control along with the amount of responsibility the marketer has. Marketing also acts mainly as a catalyst and isn't the one who actually "does". For instance, when a new product finally takes off and sales are high, the annual sales meeting is a sight to behold with lots of happy people who have blown away their sales quotas. That's the natural order of things but management often fails to recognize that marketing's contribution, which might have occurred months earlier, was key in today's success.

At the end of the day, most marketers are internally driven. One-on-one recognition from management demonstrating an understanding of the marketer's strategies and tactics and how they directly influenced the product's success is the most rewarding. Since the marketer doesn't actually implement many of the tactics, the key is to recognize the marketer's role as leader, motivator, and influencer.

As a practical matter, marketing needs to reward itself on a consistent basis. It is often the case that results occur months after the strategy is put in place making the cause and effect unclear except to the marketer and, hopefully, their management. Maybe that's just our lot in life and maybe we'd all be a bit happier if we simply accepted the unique role we fill in the organization with all of its flaws and foibles.

And maybe we should try to have a bit more fun.